


Good Intentions

by wordswehavesaid



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Contains some Oliver/Felicity, Drug Abuse, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Not Felicity or Olicity Friendly, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overdosing, Set During and After "The Fallen"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:51:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6460129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswehavesaid/pseuds/wordswehavesaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things take a turn for the worse in Nanda Parbat and the Flash is called in when Felicity enacts a dangerous plan to save Oliver from the League of Assassins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Intentions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrxlorrd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrxlorrd/gifts), [Devil_In_Disguise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devil_In_Disguise/gifts), [colorofmymind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorofmymind/gifts).



> Ok so this fic idea has been tossed around in my head for a while and I finally decided to put it down on digital paper, so to speak. Because there's something that the writers of Arrow, The Flash, _and_ Legends of Tomorrow cannot seem to grasp.
> 
> DRUGS AND ALCOHOL DO NOT MIX. PERIOD.
> 
> It's extremely dangerous and can most often prove fatal if not given immediate and proper medical attention, yet these shows seem to treat it as a semi-normal action that produces desired results every single time. So I decided to write an alternate take on perhaps the most egregious error in this regard that I've seen committed from the season 3 episode of Arrow, "The Fallen". I must disclaim, I am not a medical professional and had to search for a lot of information online, so if anything is clearly wrong on that front, feel free to inform me in the comments.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and I hope that you enjoy!

John Diggle isn’t sure what to think when a frantic Felicity hurries into the room they’ve all been directed to stay in while Thea recovers. She’s been gone a long while with Oliver, and he isn’t planning to speculate on what might have happened there. He just hopes that his friends have gotten some closure together before they lose Oliver for good.

But Felicity has a look on her face that is equal parts determination and panic, and John finds himself rising from his seat automatically at the sight. “Felicity, what’s going on?”

“John, I need your help and I can’t really explain here. Just please come with me,” she answers all in a rush, her eyes practically begging. He exchanges a look with Merlyn, who nods before standing to join them. Together, the three of them make their way back in the direction of where Oliver has been staying, and his worry starts to grow. Just what has happened?

Felicity pushes open the door and moves immediately to the side so he can view Oliver lying still on the floor, a cup not far away with some of the liquid spilled, as if it had been dropped and rolled away.

 _No._ He doesn’t even realize he’s said it out loud until he’s nearly to his friend’s body and the word is falling from his lips over and over again. “No no no, come on Oliver, man, don’t do this.”

John goes to shake the other man’s shoulder, but it’s Felicity’s voice, steady but for the slight quaver underneath, that stops him. “He won’t wake.” When he looks up, uncomprehending, she walks to the other side of the man but stays standing, not sharing at all in this moment of dread with him. “At least, he shouldn’t.”

He doesn’t know how to voice the question on his mind, but Merlyn does. The man crosses around in front of the woman and it’s more a demand when he speaks. “What have you done?”

She holds the Dark Archer’s gaze just as coolly for a moment, before glancing back down at the unresponsive Oliver whose pulse, when he feels for it, is faint but there. John sees her hands twitch, and knows that the panic has finally broken through that eerie calm.

"I stole some of that powder that that creepy priest lady used on Thea,” She confesses in a near-whisper. “Wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it when I got it, but I…" Felicity trails off helplessly.

“Yeah, how did you know you were going to completely lose your mind?” He asks, rising from the floor. Oliver is out cold, nothing to be done for that.

Merlyn puts things far more bluntly, as usual. “Or commit suicide. Was your plan to sneak Ra's prize out unconscious without getting us all killed?” John has to turn away for a moment, hand over his mouth as his mind runs through all the implications of what could happen to them if this is discovered.

“I know it’s an insane idea but I couldn’t do it! I couldn't leave him. We have to get him out of here.” She looks imploringly to John, and he realizes he’s going to have to give her the hard truth.

“Felicity, this place is like a fortress. There's no way we're getting Oliver out of here without Ra's knowing.” They’re outnumbered and outmatched, Thea still recovering and barely knowing who she is, Oliver a deadweight in any escape attempt right now. This powder stuff’s done a worse job on him than Vertigo.

“We can't,” she agrees, then turns back to Merlyn. “ _You_ can.”

John looks away again. The likelihood of the other man agreeing to this plan is slim to none unless Felicity can somehow convince him. Right now he’s more concerned with how motionless, how lifeless Oliver looks. He doesn’t even think he can see his chest moving. His eyes widening, John crouches back down to check.

“—anyone that knows the way out of this hellhole, it's you, so don't even try to—” Felicity is threatening Merlyn, but he cuts her off with a far more urgent problem.

“Oliver’s not breathing!”

“What?” is the exclamation shouted back at him from two sources. Felicity almost instantly throws herself down on the floor on Oliver’s other side, while he senses more than sees Merlyn come up behind him to look.

“Oliver? Oliver!” His other friend has taken hold of the unconscious man’s shoulders, shaking them desperately before leaning over to listen at his mouth. She straightens back up with tears springing to her eyes. “What do we do?”

“So we’re not even to make it out of this room alive, then,” Merlyn comments. “Do you even realize what will happen to us when Ra’s discovers his chosen heir is dead?”

“He’s not dead yet,” John counters, placing his hands over Oliver’s chest and interlacing his fingers. Gritting his teeth together, he starts compressions. “Come on, Oliver, come on!”

When he breaks to give mouth-to-mouth, however, Felicity places a hand on his shoulder. “John, John, he needs medical attention, we have to get him out of here!”

“There’s no time for that, Felicity. We can’t get him out of here or get anybody to him fast enough.”

“No. We can’t,” she says again, staring down at Oliver and eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration. Then she pulls out her phone. John, for the first time practically since meeting the woman, doesn’t know how anything on there could help, and goes back to the compressions.

“What are you doing?” Merlyn asks for him again.

“Contacting a friend,” is her clipped answer. “And I _really_ hope he won’t be late this time.”

Merlyn scoffs and strides from the room. “I’m getting Thea. We need to be ready to move if any of us want to make it.”

“We’re all going to make it. Oliver is _not_ going to die here,” Felicity says determinedly, though it’s only to herself and John as the door has shut firmly behind Merlyn already. “He can’t die here, I can’t lose him,” she whispers, reaching down to grasp one of Oliver’s limp hands. “I won’t.”

John wishes he could say something to comfort her but he knows it’s far more important to keep track of the number of compressions. He does his best to tune everything out, Felicity’s voice, the growing soreness in his arms, his own fear for his friend, and counts; _forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two…_

There’s sweat beading on his brow by the time Merlyn returns leading Thea by the hand. The young woman still looks lost, not even noticing them on the floor for a solid minute. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Thea,” Felicity hurries to say, “We’re just waking Oliver up.”

“That secret exit you asked about? It’s through the catacombs,” the other man reveals. “But the terrain is rough and to have any hope of escaping the League we would need to leave now. I am sorry, but Oliver—”

“No!” Felicity shouts. “We’re _not_ leaving him. Help is on the way.”

“Who could you possibly expect—” But Malcolm Merlyn never finishes, because there’s a sudden _charge_ to the air, several of the candles in the room flare in the short burst of wind before blowing out, and John falls back onto his heels in shock.

The Flash now stands before them.

“Felicity?”

“Barry!” Felicity leaps to her feet, the relief nearly tangible in her tone.

The masked man looks as though he wants to smile, but his eyes flit to the other standing occupant of the room. “Uh, isn’t that Malcolm Merlyn?”

“That’s not important right now,” the blonde woman tells him tersely. “We need your help. It’s Oliver, he’s—”

“Oh God.” Barry has again looked past Felicity and at last spotted John and Oliver on the floor. He has to suppress the urge to jump in place when the younger man is right beside him in the next second. “What happened?”

“He stopped breathing,” Merlyn supplies sardonically. “This is supposed to be our help?” He now directs at Felicity.

“Barry is the Flash, and I’m almost positive he just came from Central City in a matter of _minutes_. If you want a way out for all of us, this is it,” she explains levelly back at him.

“I have to take care of Oliver first, guys,” the speedster amends slightly, eyes scanning the other man up and down. His hands go to Oliver’s belt, but Barry pauses at John’s raised eyebrows. “Have to remove restrictive articles of clothing. How long has he been like this?”

“I’m not sure,” he admits, grimacing. “Felicity was with him. But too long.”

“Ok,” the other says. “Ok, I’m gonna need supplies once I diagnose him. What do we got on hand? I mean, what even is this place, Medieval Times?”

“More like the lion’s den,” is Merlyn’s comment.

“Barry, you need to take us home. Oliver can’t stay here,” Felicity urges. “None of us can, this is basically a fortress of master assassins who are very much join or die. We can’t use the Cave anymore so bring Oliver to Palmer Tech. I have a key that can access Ray’s emergency medical supplies.”

“That’s five trips back and forth, Felicity. I don’t know if he has that long,” Barry tells her, looking between her and the man lying prone on the floor. It’s clear the decision is tearing at him, and John is about to tell Barry to just take Oliver and go, forget about them, but Felicity reaches out and takes hold of the younger man’s shoulder.

“Barry, listen to me. You can do this, ok? You’re the fastest man alive, you’re fast enough to save all of us. Oliver believes in you and so do I.” It’s clear the pep talk has had an effect on the Central City hero. Barry swallows hard before giving a single nod. “Now _go_.”

In an eye blink neither Barry nor Oliver are on the floor with him, and a trail of lightning is left in their wake for a moment, out the doors to the porch and away. Felicity stares after long after it has faded.

“Run, Barry.”

John’s arms lay uselessly in his lap for a time, no longer occupied with trying to ensure Oliver’s survival now that the matter’s been literally taken out of his hands. He tries not to count the minutes as they pass by because that would mean counting—no _adding_ —to the minutes that Oliver has been unconscious. Instead he gets up from the floor and goes to stand against a wall, arms crossed and not looking at anyone directly. Malcolm guides his daughter to sit on the couch and wait. It’s several tense moments before Barry returns and immediately scoops Felicity up, but Malcolm steps forward with the demand, “My daughter first.”

The younger man pauses, looking the clearly disoriented woman up and down in bewilderment. “Wait, but that’s Oliver’s sister?”

“Just _go_.”

“Thea’s not exactly in a stable condition right now, though,” Felicity murmurs as they watch the sign of Barry’s departure again, this time with the younger woman. “I mean is it safe to leave her alone with Oliver while Barry comes back?”

“I was not about to leave _my daughter_ in this ‘hellhole’ as you called it another moment now that Oliver has been spirited away. Ra’s al Ghul’s wrath will know no bounds if he discovers the rest of us still here,” the other man maintains. It’s silent after that.

At least until their rescuer comes zipping back into the room. Nearly all the candles have been blown out by this repeated occurrence. The cause of it hardly pays any attention to that, however, instead stating, “Thea wasn’t doing so great on the trip, she started clutching her head when I dropped her off. Does she need—”

“One problem at a time, Barry,” Felicity urges, throwing her arms around his neck in preparation, so he hurries to lift her back into his arms again before disappearing.

“And then there were two,” Merlyn quips in the still air, going to stand out on the porch. John knows that’s a clear message about who’s going next. He’s not all that surprised, considering how deeply the man’s fear of the Demon Head runs. And truthfully, John’s also trying to wrap his head around the fact that he’s about to travel via speedster, faster than he ever thought possible not even a year ago. He never really wanted to experience that firsthand.

Barry does not even pause before collecting Malcolm, and he knows now that they’re really racing against the clock with Oliver’s life on the line. Each trip that Barry makes back for one of them is another stretch of time he could be treating Oliver. Although each interval between grows shorter and shorter, perhaps as Barry learns the terrain or shortcuts better.

Then John hears a distant _boom_ somewhere beyond the fortress, and the lightning is crackling at a faster pace than ever before, intermingled with something that sounds like Barry’s voice yelling in sheer determination and pain. The younger man collides with a table upon reentering the room and stays collapsed against it for a moment.

“You alright?” John asks, taking a step closer and placing a hand on the other’s trembling shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, just a bit…needed to catch my breath.” The younger man gives a shake of his head as if to clear it. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” he remarks truthfully.

“Try closing your eyes,” is Barry’s advice. John grimaces, but takes it, and there’s a slight pause before he feels the other man’s arms lifting him up. He can only be thankful that this trip will hopefully be short, and that he’s never been known for motion sickness before.

\---

Barry pushes himself to the top speed that he can while safely carrying another person. Of course he doesn’t want to harm Diggle, but each second that ticks by sees his anxiety and worry for Oliver growing. He’s barely had more than a few seconds to try and assess the man’s situation and what could be wrong with him, and he hasn’t been given any clues to go off of.

Well, not by the others. But Barry had spotted the dropped cup on the floor by the time he’d returned for Malcolm Merlyn of all people, and so had taken it with him, setting it aside on a table near the back of the room Felicity had directed him to for examination or help in his diagnosis.

He thinks, however, he’s got a pretty clear picture now of what’s going on. Oliver’s been poisoned, and his money’s on the master assassins. That at least will narrow things down. Felicity, too, had promised to get the medical supplies and monitors out and to watch Oliver’s condition for him while he was gone, in addition to the oxygen machine he’d hooked the man up to.

He was hopeful the woman would call in her boyfriend on this as well, considering it was his equipment and Ray clearly was incredibly capable which they could always use more of. His ideal option would’ve been to go to Central and leave Oliver in the experienced hands of Caitlin while he retrieved everyone, but with his now absolute suspicion of Wells—or at least, the man pretending to be Harrison Wells—he refused to expose the other vigilante to his mother’s murderer in such a vulnerable state.

Just the thought of Oliver’s condition has him hoisting Dig up higher and running just a bit faster. His vision had started to blur a little over midway through this whole process but it hadn’t gotten bad until after he’d dropped Merlyn off with Oliver and the others. Nearly five round trips from Starling to wherever the heck that creepy place had been was taking its toll clearly, but he couldn’t afford to drop Diggle and himself in the ocean any more than he could give up on Oliver. He hadn’t thought to grab some calorie bars when Felicity’s distress signal had come through, and that’s his own fault. Oliver isn’t going to die because of it.

He practically staggers to a halt once finally inside Palmer Tech with everyone again, barely catching himself on the exam table holding Oliver while Diggle himself stumbles away.

“I am never doing that again,” the older man states vehemently.

“Well we will never have a reason to get picked up by speedster from Nanda Parbat ever again,” is Felicity’s pointed counter before she looks sharply to him. “Barry, Oliver’s still not responding.”

“Right, right,” he takes a couple deep breathes and rips the cowl off his head before giving it another shake. “He probably won’t until we get the toxins out of his system, but since he’s still unconscious…the important thing is to keep his airway clear. I can’t give him anything orally until we got him breathing on his own. Does Ray have IV equipment? Maybe call him and ask, he should probably be here anyway since we’re using his stuff—”

“Barry, I do not _care_ as long as it saves Oliver!” His friend snaps at him, and he rocks back on his heels. “Just do it.”

He spots a stand and empty bags, choosing to retrieve those rather than risk distressing the blonde woman any further. Barry then takes hold of one of Oliver’s limp arms, searching for a vein to insert the IV. “If he wakes up soon, I’ll want to administer activated carbon.”

“Why, what’s that do?” is Dig’s question.

“It prevents absorption of toxins by binding them to it,” he says, scanning a rack of supplies. “And that’s usually paired with the IV to flush them out of his system, a cathartic or fluids should work—”

“Oliver’s got some herbs from the island,” the other man tells him. “They cured me when I was shot with a curare-laced bullet. Think he was keeping them back at the loft. Would that help?”

“They might.”

Diggle leaves without another word while Felicity remains at Oliver’s side. Merlyn is sitting with Thea who has quieted. Still no sign of anyone else like the other members of Team Arrow or the owner of all this personal equipment they’ve borrowed without asking. Barry looks to the blonde woman again and has to be thankful Ray’s such an easy-going guy because he can’t imagine what his reaction might be to all this otherwise. He supposes Felicity being the man’s girlfriend will probably also smooth any ruffled feathers over.

“Natural medicine might be good for Oliver,” he comments mostly to himself as he begins the IV drip, never having been too comfortable with silence. As usual, he continues to fill it with his own chatter. “At least until I’ve tested for what poison he was given. Then I might be able to determine an antidote.”

“What?” Felicity’s tone is both sharp and bewildered as she looks at him.

“Felicity…” He starts, not sure how to break this news to her. Barry darts over to the table and returns with the cup, holding it out for her to see. “I found this on the floor nearby him. And his symptoms…whatever you guys got mixed up in back there, someone poisoned Oliver for it.”

His friend is shaking her head now, like she can refuse what he’s saying simply through the action. “No, no that wasn’t—Oliver wasn’t _poisoned_ , Barry. That’s not what happened.”

“How do you know?” The science, the evidence of their eyes, Barry would have thought of all people Felicity would understand that no other explanation was possible.

At least until Malcolm Merlyn finally stands up from his place by his daughter. “Because then Ms. Smoak would become your would-be poisoner.”

Barry knows his mouth falls open, but no sound emerges. He turns wide eyes on Felicity, who’s currently glaring at Merlyn.

“It was _not_ poison. Barry, I can explain. The place we were in is called Nanda Parbat and it’s this creepy fortress for the League of Assassins. Long story short, their leader wants Oliver to become his successor and he nearly killed Thea as leverage so that Oliver would agree in order for her to be brought back. Oliver was going to go through with it, but I- I couldn’t let it happen, Barry, how could I? There wasn’t any way of convincing him to escape. I had to do something!”

“So you _poisoned_ him?” He can’t wrap his head around it; sweet, funny Felicity standing there with a steel to her desperation.

“No! I put this powder in his drink that was supposed to knock him out so we could sneak him out to the plane with everyone else. By the time he woke up we would’ve already been in flight and away from Ra’s,” she tells him, her eyes pleading with him to understand. “I just drugged him, it wasn’t supposed to end up like this.”

“Felicity, this isn’t drugging—it’s an overdose!” He sweeps one arm towards the still-unconscious man before holding the cup out to her again. “You said you put it in his drink. Is this wine? Some kind of alcohol? Do you know how _dangerous_ it is to mix sedatives with alcohol, how many people _die_ every year? And most of those are just by accident!” How many supposed crime scenes or suicides he’d been called to with Joe, or requested to run toxicology on, only for the answer to be a stupid, stupid mistake like this.

He shakes his head, struggling to tamp down on his anger. Felicity is his friend and she is clearly upset, yelling and lecturing will do no good for Oliver right now. He needs answers. “What was the powder you gave him? What was the dose? I need to know the name and the concentration of it in his system if we’re going to help him.”

But Felicity looks back at him with wide eyes. “I…I don’t know. This priest lady with the League, she just had it. I saw her use it on Thea, so I grabbed some because I thought it’d be useful. Then I saw the wine and I just knew if I could get Oliver to take it—”

“You don’t know,” he echoes, with some dreadful mix of horror and dismay settling low in his gut. “You don’t know what you gave him.”

“We know what it does, the lady used it on Thea and—”

“Because she probably knew what she was doing!” He finally snaps. “Because she used a controlled dose of a substance she knew the effects and the name of! She didn’t just throw some in a glass of wine and trick Thea into taking it!”

“Huh?” A fairly unfamiliar voice asks hazily. Apparently his shouting has roused the younger Queen from whatever stupor she was in before. He can only wish it would do the same for Oliver. “What’s happening?”

“Thea?” Malcolm Merlyn crouches down in front of her, and for a man responsible for the deaths of 503 people he seems oddly concerned and vulnerable in this moment. “How are you feeling?”

The young woman makes a face. “Worse with you here.”

“Well, I suppose that means you’ve come back to us at the least,” Merlyn mutters, but Thea gets to her feet shakily and moves away from him.

“Where are we? What’s happening? I was at home, and then Ra’s…and Oliver, he—Oliver?” She’s spotted her brother on the table now, and Barry nearly has to tap into the speed force to make it out of the way as she runs over. “Ollie!”

“He’s- he’s just unconscious, Thea,” Felicity lies, shooting Barry a warning look over the distressed woman’s head. “But a friend of ours is taking care of it, right Barry?”

“Yeah,” he agrees as the two women both look to him. “Yeah, I just need to run some tests. Does Ray have a mass spectrometer?”

“He should,” Felicity answers, and reluctantly moves away from Oliver’s side to show him the way. He’s barely followed her out the door before she abruptly spins on her heel. “Barry, you know I never meant for this to happen, right?” She asks quietly. He doesn’t really trust himself to speak at the moment, and merely nods. “I’d never hurt Oliver. I love him.”

And now his eyes are widening again. “What about Ray?”

Felicity winces. “Things didn’t work out.”

“You were with him just last week!” He points out, mind reeling. This whole night could be summed up as the sort of feeling of having the rug yanked out from under his feet, only repeatedly, until he’s struggling to stand.

“Barry, _enough_ about Ray, please,” she stresses. “The spectrometer’s this way.”

It’s small enough to be moved, which he’s honestly thankful for since he doesn’t trust himself to be able to run from here to Oliver and back constantly in order to properly monitor him. As he picks the spectrometer up he tries to ignore the new wave of guilt and nervousness in regards to Felicity’s clearly recent ex.

Diggle’s returned by the time they make it back into the room, and he takes one look at Barry before asking, “Something wrong?”

 _Yes, everything_ , half of him wants to spit out, _Felicity almost killed the man she loves on accident_. The other half wants to cry. But instead he places the spectrometer down on a nearby table and draws in a deep breath. As he straightens up, however, his vision blacks out for a split second and he only just manages to catch himself on the table.

“Barry!” Felicity calls out, clearly worried.

The other man’s by his side fast as humanly possible. “What’s going on?”

“Super speed sort of comes with hypoglycemia,” he explains, pressing his hands to his temples in an effort to combat the dizziness now a constant presence around the edges of his vision.

“You need food,” Dig surmises. “Or rest, more like it. Come on, man—”

“I can’t, I have to run the sample on the mass spec and then I have to adjust the IV drip according to whatever it says the drug is and then he needs round the clock monitoring, at least until he wakes up,” Barry counters, stumbling back over to the supply racks as the mass spectrometer begins to hum to life.

“You’re dead on your feet. How do we know Oliver won’t be affected by more mismanagement?” Merlyn questions pointedly. Barry ignores him, instead grabbing about five bags and the other IV stand.

“Because lucky for us, Ray has glucose on hand.”

“Barry, please hurry,” Felicity urges, having returned to her spot by Oliver’s table next to Thea, who is looking from person to person with increasing confusion.

“I thought my brother passed out? What drugs is he on? And super speed—you’re the Flash. Since when do we know the Flash?”

Barry elects not to field those questions either, instead focusing on pushing up one sleeve of his suit as far as it’ll go in order to find a vein in his own arm. Caitlin would be having a fit right now. So would Cisco, considering he can’t even remember where he discarded his gloves at the moment.

“Can I see the herbs?” He requests, pushing himself forward using the IV stand for support. Diggle comes over to the table where Barry is beginning to gather a sample from the cup for the mass spec. He loads that into the machine to start the analysis, then turns to the herbs. It’s a well-composed mix, clearly chosen with care. He’s hopeful that whatever mystery drug is in Oliver’s system won’t be something that would interact negatively with them since he’s leery of introducing even more potent pharmaceuticals to an already unstable situation.

Steadier on his feet now, Barry makes his way back to the exam table to check Oliver. His pulse has risen up to normal levels for someone at rest, and he thinks the man might be capable of breathing on his own now. He starts looking for the right supplies again in case he needs to switch him over to a nasal cannula just as a precaution.

“You guys might need to move back a bit,” he advises to Thea, Felicity, and Malcolm, cutting into their explanation to the former of just what all had happened while she was out. Barry stops his own IV and unplugs it, hoping the sugar boost has been enough but needing the mobility in order to do about three people’s jobs. He thinks the only reason he hasn’t devolved into a massive ball of stress is that Oliver needs him right now, and so his mind keeps repeating the same mantra over and over to _not panic_.

He finishes extubating Oliver and puts him on a new fluid bag by the time the spectrometer beeps indicating it’s finished.

“Good news, the herbs should be safe,” he announces after a few tense minutes of studying the results.

“Here, Oliver showed me how to prepare them once,” Diggle offers, placing a chair in front of him as a sort of silent command and so Barry drops into it, undeniably grateful. It’s a good thing it’s got wheels. He’s not sure he’s going to be able to get back up for a long time now.

While he’s been working it’s been easy enough to ignore his frustration and anger and fear for his friend, but now he pushes the chair as close to Oliver as he can get and really _looks_ for the first time since he’d arrived at Nanda Parbat at how pale the man’s face is. It hammers home just how close they’d come to losing him. And they didn’t have to. He can’t look Felicity, much less Thea in the eye, instead helping Dig to prop the archer up in order to get the herbal mix down his throat.

“He’ll be ok now, right?” Oliver’s sister asks.

“We’ll have to see,” is the only response he can give her.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine, Thea,” Felicity states, with a confidence he thinks she might be trying to make herself feel. “He’s Oliver, he always pulls through. He has to. He won’t leave us.”

Barry’s tired enough to be able to tune all that out, simply sitting and watching and waiting for any single sign. He knows it’s a lot to ask of a man who regularly gives anything and everything to his city and the people he cares about, but they need one more miracle from Oliver Queen.

\---

It feels like nothing, waking up. At least, not at first. But gradually Oliver grows aware of the pinch of an IV needle, the taste of the island herbs in his mouth, and a bone-deep exhaustion like he’s had the fight of his life while still asleep.

It’s disorienting, needless to say, and he only grows more confused as he blinks eyes open to bright lights and shiny metal surfaces when last his mind can recall he was in the cavernous fortress of Nanda Parbat.

A dull red color to his left catches his eye, and his head turns slightly. “…Barry?”

The younger man is sitting there wearing the majority of his suit, though his hands are bare and currently braced against the back of his neck while his head hangs between his knees. But it shoots back up at the sound of Oliver’s hoarse, scratchy voice.

“Oliver! Oh thank God you’re back.” He looks more relieved than he can ever remember seeing the other vigilante, and about as tired as Oliver feels. But he’s smiling all the same, practically beaming.

“Oliver!”

“Ollie!”

Felicity and Thea both crowd in on his right, and John is just a little beyond them. They’re all wearing looks that tell him whatever happened, it was bad.

For now he reaches out for his sister’s hand and asks, “Hey Speedy, how are you feeling?”

She rolls her eyes. “I should be asking you that.” Oliver’s just happy seeing her back to normal after the Pit. He hadn’t known what to do when she didn’t recognize him.

“You had us so worried,” Felicity tells him. Her eyes are red-rimmed and his heart clenches at the sight.

“What happened to me?” He remembers their passionate lovemaking, having this last chance to pour every ounce of feeling into this beautiful woman who’s come to mean nearly everything to him. Oliver had found some peace in that moment; whatever happened next with Ra’s, with the League, Felicity knew he loved her and returned that love. They’d shared a last drink together, and then…and then…

Oliver struggles to push himself up from the table. About four pairs of hands are all offering their assistance at once, but it’s Diggle who provides a reliable shoulder to throw his arm over.

“Yeah, you should probably, um, take care of things,” Barry recommends, scrubbing a hand over his eyes before reaching to remove the IV. “You had a lot of fluids.”

Oliver nods despite having no clue what Barry’s talking about. Since when was Barry even _with_ them—wherever this is? But as Diggle leads him in the direction of a restroom, he realizes he recognizes the view out the windows. They’re inside Palmer Tech.

“Dig, what’s happening?” He mutters under his breath. “What are we doing here, who called Barry—”

“It’s a whole lot of complicated right now, Oliver,” is all the other man cryptically tells him. They pass by Malcolm and the other man looks just as tense as his friend sounds. Something has not gone to plan. He splashes water over his face while in the restroom, trying to wake himself up fully. He needs to be prepared, he needs to be ready, and he needs to get answers.

Oliver’s able to walk on his own, though Diggle sticks close to his side, and he takes the time to really look everyone over. Malcolm has moved closer to the group, though he’s against the wall and to the left of Thea, who has her arms crossed and is staring pensively at the table he’d been laying on. Felicity is next to his sister, and meets his eyes with a smile. She alone looks happy, and he takes some heart from that.

Barry, by contrast, seems positively drained of his usual energy and positive demeanor. He’s even hooked himself up to an IV stand Oliver hadn’t noticed before, some kind of fluid from about five different bags dripping into his veins.

“He keeps doing that to stay awake,” Diggle explains quietly to his raised eyebrows. “Try and get him to sleep, Oliver, he couldn’t till you’d woken up.”

Oliver grimaces. He’d love to, because Barry looks _awful_ , but the younger man is part of this mess he’s woken up to now. So instead he draws right up to the table and lays his palms flat on the surface. “Last I remember, I was in Nanda Parbat to fulfill a bargain with Ra’s al Ghul,” he announces to everyone at large. “Now does _anybody_ want to tell me what exactly happened to let me wake up in Starling?”

“All I know is I came to here and you’d been drugged,” Thea reveals, which is at least more information than he had before. It even sounds familiar, like he should have those memories and yet it’s all still so hazy.

“We needed Barry to treat you, and he needed supplies they didn’t have at Nanda Parbat,” Felicity jumps right in to complete the story, and it all makes sense, so he smiles in gratitude. But he can’t miss the way Malcolm rolls his eyes at the two of them or the pointed look Felicity had given the scientist when saying his name.

Barry is glancing between Oliver and Felicity, and there’s a conflict warring on his face before he gives a slight shake of the head. “You weren’t just drugged. You OD’d on a mix of sedatives and wine.”

“What?” Thea is appalled, and he can’t blame her, because Oliver is suddenly thankful for the table since he thinks it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Barry says, and he sounds so calm apart from the deep frown marring his features and the way his head’s turned slightly to the side like he can’t even watch the chaos his words are steadily producing. “Oliver didn’t know he was taking it, and Felicity—”

Oliver’s eyes snap to her at the same time as she gives a distressed, “Barry.”

“I’m sorry,” is the speedster’s pained answer, before he finally turns pitying eyes on Oliver. “She didn’t know it’d be a lethal dose, Oliver. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Felicity…” Her name is all that can fall from his lips. Oliver feels unbalanced and wonders if he’s still on drugs, because _how_ can this be possible? Felicity would _never_ do something like that to him.

To his left, Diggle looks down at the ground and remains silent. It’s that lack of defense that tells him more than anything, it has to be true.

“You _drugged_ my brother?” Thea takes a step back from Felicity and is looking the woman up and down like she’s never even seen her before.

“Thea, I had to, you don’t understand—”

“No, what I don’t understand is why you thought you should give my brother drugs and alcohol when that’s how I wrapped myself around a tree two years ago!” His sister snaps, and he doesn’t think he remembers Thea ever being so livid. There’s a look in her eyes, like when she emerged from the Pit. And Oliver knows he should intervene, say something, but the words don’t come even as he breathes in and out, over and over, because it’s the only way to fight the panic trying to claw its way up his throat and all he can think is _no, not her, not Felicity_.

“Oliver. Hey.” Barry’s noticed and is suddenly standing before him in a heartbeat, gentle hands on his shoulders. “You’re still with us, alright? Just breathe.”

Felicity’s made her way around the table and squeezes between them in order to take Oliver’s face in her hands. “Oliver—”

There’s a muted ­ _beep_ and the sound of a door sliding open. “So did the ‘something awful’ stop being awful? I see you used your keycard a few hours—oh.” Ray Palmer is standing in the doorway, the majority of his A.T.O.M. suit still on sans the helmet, and he’s frozen looking at the two of them. Then his eyes dart from side to side, taking in everything else. “…Can I help you all?”

“Ray.” Felicity’s face has taken on something of a pinched quality as she turns from him to Oliver. “It’s not what it looks like! I mean, it _is_ or really we _are_ , but just this, this right now, it isn’t what you’re thinking—”

“We can explain,” says Barry, who gives Oliver and Felicity one last worried look before making his way over to the billionaire. “Look, I’m really sorry we didn’t call you about this, if it hadn’t been an emergency…” The speedster’s voice fades away as he leads Ray out of the room, and Oliver knows he should be grateful that’s one less thing he’ll need to try and tackle. But there’s really only one thing he can focus on right now, and it’s the woman standing before him.

The others seem to get the hint. Malcolm slowly approaches, and rather than say anything the man lets his look alone tell Oliver to _deal with this_. The hand Malcolm attempts to put on Thea’s arm, however, is shrugged off, and his sister stares hard at Felicity for a long moment before turning and striding from the room with fists clenched, followed by her father.

Diggle lingers longer than the rest. He’s waiting for a signal, and Oliver gives him a nod. John’s support is something he’ll undoubtedly need before this whole fiasco is over. But this is something that he and Felicity need to handle, together.

“Felicity—” He starts quietly just as the other man exits.

“Oliver, please, you know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have to,” she immediately responds, taking another step in closer. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses and brimming with tears, and it’s all he can do to speak just one word.

“Why?”

“Because,” she states, looking as though unsure what needs to be explained. “You agreed to Ra’s deal, Oliver, and you were just going to let it happen. Give up everything, all of us, and become his heir. I knew you’d never try to escape on your own, so I took some of that powder that they used on Thea and put it in the drink I gave you. It was just supposed to buy us time to sneak you out! There wasn’t any time to come up with a better plan, and if I’d known how dangerous it was I would have never done it. Watching you fight for your life on this table was one of the worst nights of my life.” Her eyes are wide and earnest now, full of the pain she speaks of. “You _know_ I’d have never risked that if I’d known.”

“Giving me an overdose was an accident,” he agrees after a long moment, and she relaxes with a relieved smile. Only to tense again as he continues, “Drugging me wasn’t. I don’t know when you decided you were going to drug me, if it was before or after we…” Just thinking about it, mind flashing back in vivid detail, is enough to rob him of his words. But not for the right reasons. He licks his lips and tries again. “I made a choice, to be intimate with you. To trust you enough with that—”

“Oh, like you trusted Isobel Rochev and Helena Bertinelli?” She asks in a tone that’s just as biting as it is mocking, nostrils flaring.

“That—” There’s heat rising in his cheeks as he gapes at her.

“Or how about the countless other gorgeous women from your past, Oliver? I’m sure there was a _lot_ of trust there.” Her tone is completely mocking now, and he looks at the ground for the moment. She’s right, most of the relations he’s had in the past had very little to do with trust, and perhaps he deserves this. But can’t she see that’s precisely why they don’t matter? Not the way this, _them_ , matters.

“You were different,” he finally says.

“How?”

“Because I love you, Felicity,” he answers. “I love you and I trust you with everything, my identity, my mission, the good and the bad. I’ve never been happier than when I was with you last night…but now all I can think of is how you, you took advantage of that.” God, this is hard to say. He hates even having to accuse this woman, his friend, his teammate, his _lover_ , of something so terrible.

She’s watched him this whole time, listening with lips drawn into a sad frown. “If you trusted me…there wouldn’t still be all these things about you I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have to fight you every step of the way on that, Oliver, and you’d tell me your plans and listen when I tell you not to do it. This deal with Ra’s—you were going to _leave me_ ,” she says, voice trembling though there’s a hard look to her eyes. “And I wasn’t going to let that happen. I am sorry that you feel I betrayed your trust, but I am not sorry I saved you from Ra’s.”

“For how long?” She blinks at him in confusion. “Felicity, even you said there’s nowhere we could run from Ra’s. He has to know I’m gone by now, and if that’s the case the League is already looking for me. Starling will be the first place they come. Every second I stay here I’m putting the people of this city in danger.”

“We had to come here, Oliver, you were- you needed care,” is the phrasing she picks. “And I wasn’t going to leave you in Nanda Parbat in either case. Getting out of there, that part, was always the plan.”

“A plan that I can’t agree to.”

“Oliver—”

“I gave Ra’s my word, Felicity,” he states. “And it doesn’t matter if I didn’t consent to this, it doesn’t matter that it almost _killed_ me, I’ve broken my deal with him. Lord knows what he’s planning to do in retaliation but I refuse to let Starling come to harm because of it.”

“So you’ll turn yourself back in?” She’s shaking her head before he can even reply. “Oliver, Ra’s could kill you.”

“If he does, he won’t have his heir.” It’s the only bargaining chip he has now, Oliver knows. Joining with the League is the one move that could have ensured both Thea and Starling’s safety, and bought him time to come up with his next course of action. He could’ve survived anything the League put him through with the knowledge that his loved ones were protected.

“You don’t have to be his heir, Oliver,” she argues heatedly. “What Ra’s was planning to do to you, it was wrong, and you only agreed to it because of Thea. Well now that isn’t a problem anymore and we’ve escaped Nanda Parbat.”

“Felicity, we _can’t_ outrun this,” he stresses. Doesn’t she understand all they’ve done is made all of Starling a target for one of the most skilled, deadly armies in the world? Slade nearly destroyed the city with his Mirakuru soldiers because of Oliver, but this, _this_ he could have prevented.

He can tell she won’t back down so easily, and despite it normally being a trait he loved about her right now he doesn’t know why she won’t just see reason. “We’ve been doing a pretty good job of it so far. The League still has to be hours behind us.”

And he doesn’t know how that can be possible considering he’s clearly been out cold most of the night—but then his mind connects the dots. “Barry ran us here.”

“It took him just about an hour, five trips,” she informs him, a sort of smugness in her tone that he doesn’t understand until she adds, “Pretty sure we could outrun the League for the rest of our lives.”

Oliver shakes his head adamantly. “No, we couldn’t ask Barry that.” They shouldn’t even be _discussing_ it, and this is precisely why he’d resolved to only ask for the younger man’s aid in an absolute emergency. “He has responsibilities of his own, a city to protect just like I do.”

“But if the problem is that your being in Starling puts it in danger, then we’ll just have to leave it. John will be here, and- and Laurel. Ray, even, it’s not like there’s a shortage of vigilantes! You and I can keep moving, keep the League guessing. You know Barry would help us, he’s our friend, he’d do anything to keep us safe. I don’t care where we are as long as we’re together, Oliver.” Felicity takes his hands, looking up at him with so much earnest feeling. But his remain limp in her hold. “Oliver?”

Before tonight, he might have said yes. Everything that the League had done to discredit the Arrow, the sacrifice Roy had to make because of it, Thea’s near-death, it all had had him considering what the point of his mission was anymore, if he really could keep doing this. He’d dreamed of the life he and Felicity could have together, just the two of them with no criminals or terrorists to stop. How easy it could be to walk away from it all.

Now it just fills him with shame. How could he leave things for the others to deal with on their own, his friends and practically family who he’d either directly or indirectly made part of his mission? How could he abandon Thea with no hope of ever seeing her again? How could he rely on Barry’s help to run them away from his enemies when the other man looked to him as a partner, an inspiration?

“I can’t,” he tells her solemnly, removing his hands from her suddenly slack grasp. “Starling is my home, Felicity, and Ra’s knows that. He’d destroy it whether I was here or not, just because he knows it would destroy _me_. And I made a promise never to leave this city to fight its struggles alone again.”

“But you’ll leave me.”

“Felicity—”

“No, Oliver, just don’t,” she snaps, holding a hand up and blinking to stave off her tears. “I always knew there were things in your life more important than me. I guess I thought that would change once we—but I should’ve known better.”

“I still love you,” he insists.

“So you keep telling me,” she says with a smile that is far more bitter than fond. “You love me but the mission comes first. You love me but you don’t trust me.”

Shocked and even betrayed as he’s felt tonight, he can see where this conversation is going and it nearly makes his throat close up. Every instinct he’s built up over the past eight years is trying to get him to shut down, and he only barely manages a hoarse, “I want to. I’m _trying_.”

“I understand Ra’s gave you an impossible choice when he hurt Thea,” she states. “But just like with Malcolm you’re making these decisions without me. You won’t let me help you, and now—if you can’t kill Ra’s then he is going to kill you Oliver and I- I _cannot_ go through that again. I can’t do this,” Felicity repeats, stepping back from him with a little shake of the head.

“Felicity…” He hates that all he can make is this quiet, broken sound when what he needs now is strength, the conviction to keep her from walking away like she is now. But he stares straight ahead, eyes squeezing shut in defeat at the sound of the door sliding closed.

Only what seems to him an hour ago he’d been toasting to the two of them and their love…and now all he wants is to drink alone.


End file.
